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Big Ideas: Could most of Toronto’s cops go gun-free?

Lawyer Peter Rosenthal’s Big Idea of restricting firearms to highly trained ETF teams seems radical, but cops without guns are already common in the U.K., New Zealand and Norway.

Lawyer Peter Rosenthal, who has been involved in several inquests into fatal police shootings, has spoken out in favour of taking guns away from most police, to be replaced by a larger number of highly skilled ETF teams, which include negotiators as well as skilled marksmen. (Jim Rankin / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Should that ever happen, it might be a first for North America, he wrote, but certainly not in the world.

A handful of countries, notably the United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland), New Zealand and Norway, do not allow most police officers to carry guns. In the U.K., only authorized officers can keep them on their belt. In the other two nations, guns are kept in vehicles.

He would like to see firearms limited to the Emergency Task Force, a specialized police unit of trained negotiators and skilled marksmen. Rosenthal would increase the ETF teams on duty at any time from one to five or six, spread across the city.

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“What seems to be very reasonable is that we stop training officers using firearms, and all that money for training could be saved and then we could have more ETF teams on duty at any given time, so they could reasonably be expected to get (to the scene) before anything definitive happens,” he said.

Police spokesman Mark Pugash referred the Star to the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, which is responsible for use-of-force policies. He said the Star would need to file a freedom of information request to learn the cost of annual firearms training.

Ministry spokesman Andrew Morrison responded that “the Ministry is not considering disarming police at this time. Police officers have dangerous and unpredictable jobs and we rely on them to keep us and our communities safe.”

The Toronto police annual report shows there were 23 instances of a firearm being discharged in 2012, down from 35 in 2011. Police pointed a gun at a person 889 times in 2012.

Steve Summerville, a retired Toronto staff sergeant and now president of Stay Safe Instructional Programs, a private security training company, said officers face a very real risk, depending on the situation, and it would be unreasonable to remove firearms from the equation.

“Every police officer needs the ability to exercise judgment to protect their life and the life of another person, and the training is designed to make that so,” said Summerville, who has testified at coroner’s inquests and trained officers on the use of firearms during his final years with the force. “It’s been my experience that life-and-death situations are spontaneous.”

Still, the United Kingdom and New Zealand say they have fared well without arming most officers, allowing them instead to carry weapons such as batons and pepper spray.

The London Metropolitan Police have 2,278 authorized firearms officers out of about 30,000 officers. A spokesman said firearms officers were called in about 4,500 times in 2012. Only once were shots fired.

Mike Rusbatch, the New Zealand Police Assistant Commissioner for operations, said the force there “does not support the routine arming of our staff, which is not backed by evidence and would irrevocably change the relationship that our officers have with the public.”

The officers continue to experience high levels of public trust, he said, along with a falling crime rate and access to options such as Tasers.

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